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Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) has continued to grow new home lending but reported a sizable drop in profits for the year.
In its financial results for the year ending September 2025, released on Monday (10 November), ANZ revealed that annual statutory profits tumbled 10 per cent to $5.89 billion, impacted heavily by one-off costs tied to resolving regulatory investigations and actions to “simplify” ANZ’s business.
Annual cash profits plummeted 14 per cent (to $5.78 billion) amid high redundancy costs and legal penalties. In September, the bank agreed to pay a penalty of $240 million covering four different investigations linked to misconduct over several years.
When excluding significant items, its cash profit was flat on the prior year at $6.89 billion.
However, while profits have dropped, the group has delivered strong growth in its retail banking arm when it comes to lending.
Its results reveal that ANZ’s loan book (excluding Suncorp Bank) grew to $341 billion, with $89 billion in new lending. This builds on the results reported in the financial year 2024, when ANZ saw $85 billion in new lending (and when its total portfolio sat around $324 billion).
Over FY25, ANZ welcomed 181,00 new home loan accounts, up 7,000 places on the year before. The average loan size also grew over the year, rising from $570,000 in FY24 to $586,000.
Excluding Suncorp Bank, brokers originated 68 per cent of new ANZ mortgages over the year, totalling $60.5 billion. This is the highest broker-originated flow in recent history for the major bank.
Overall, brokers originated 61 per cent of ANZ Bank’s mortgage portfolio, up from 57 per cent in FY24.
Meanwhile, the proportion of home loans written by the proprietary channel was 32 per cent, dipping from 33 per cent last year.
While owner-occupiers made up the majority of new business (62 per cent), investor flows remain elevated, at 38 per cent, above long-term averages.
Around 31 per cent of new flows came for loans in Victoria and Tasmania, followed by NSW/the ACT (30 per cent) and Queensland (19 per cent). Just under a fifth of new mortgages were from Western Australia, and 8 per cent were for South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Business lending rose 3 per cent to $67 billion.
Despite its lending growth, ANZ’s mortgage growth remains below system. ANZ is also the only major bank not to be taking part in the federal government’s 5 per cent Deposit Scheme, which recently expanded and has already reported strong demand.
Commenting on the results, ANZ CEO Nuno Matos said: “Our full year statutory profit of $5.89 billion was down 10 per cent on the previous year’s performance, impacted by significant items of $1.1 billion as we resolved long-standing regulatory investigations, and actions taken to simplify our business.
“While our financial performance held steady when excluding these items, our performance as a business reinforces the importance of our ANZ 2030 strategy,” which was revealed last month and includes a strong focus on proprietary lending.
“Looking at our four main divisions, Institutional and New Zealand have performed consistently well, however Australia Retail and Business & Private Bank have underperformed. Despite growth in both assets and deposits, intense competition and a falling interest rate environment impacted margins.”
The ANZ CEO added that the group will work to “ensure [it gets] the basics right”, including a “substantial improvement in productivity and initial investment for the bank’s growth”, and reiterating a focus on strengthening proprietary lending.
In an investor update, ANZ stated that this would be done by lifting the number of lenders in branches by 50 per cent over the next five years and investing in and training its mortgage sales force.
“The results we have announced today demonstrate our franchise is strong, but action is needed. We are absolutely committed to executing ANZ 2030 and are on the right path. As we deliver our strategy, we will accelerate growth and outperform the market, while delivering more for our customers,” Matos concluded.
The shift to push harder into proprietary lending has been a growing theme at the big four banks. Westpac last week revealed a new push to grow proprietary lending to improve returns, while National Australia Bank (NAB) recently reported a 46 per cent increase in proprietary lending over the past two years.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has also been targeting direct lending in recent years, with its most recent financial results revealing that broker flows dropped to 33 per cent, down from 35 per cent in FY24. Meanwhile, proprietary lending was up to 67 per cent at the yellow bank.
[Related: ANZ overhauls leadership with 3 executive appointments]
